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Obama: The New Eisenhower

Obama Doctrine, the articulation of a new mode of “smart power” that seeks to manipulate the existing propensities of power politics in the region without overcommitting US military force on the ground, with the full assurance that the threat of power is far more effective that the delivery of power. – Hamid Dabashi

An outcome that it opens that various summaries fail to report is that opening economic relations with Iran allows the US to manipulate Shia militias in order to combat ISIS on their turf. This alone shows why the GOP opposition is wrong-headed and near-sighted. Those criticisms dumb down a very complex deal into fear-laden talking points to appeal to a specific type of voter that buys the proposal that the devil is at the US door step and all of us must arm ourselves against it.

Reading that last line, the Obama Doctrine sounds far more like the Eisenhower doctrine especially with respect to Korea and China. He avoided war with China there – barely – and opened up avenues for diplomatic and economic relations. Eisenhower used the threat of overwhelming power to avoid military conflict and American casualties under his watch. He had seen enough.

This is Obama doing the same in Iran – a place where, ironically, Eisenhower made his greatest failure which set the stage for the crisis in 1979 and today. This began with the joint MI6 and CIA operations to instigate the overthrow Mosaddeq in 1953 and arguably continued with the Atoms for Peace idea in 1957. The former event was largely over oil given that Mosaddeq was planning a nationalization of the Iranian oil market which would have driven out British corporate interests in the religion.

These events set the stage for continued conflict and instability leading up to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the current nuclear capabilities of Iran. It also shows us, again, that oil is at the center of everything the US has to do with the Middle East. Both of these political and economic structures are in play with Obama’s deal – a deal that seeks to mitigate their effects not by further isolating Iran from Western intervention, but by opening it up.

As it sits, the deal gives the Security Council 15 years to work on continued negotiations. That is a lot of time. Obama plays a long game which the GOP takes a “score on this play or else” approach. That approach, as recent history suggests, leads US interests directly into the teeth of war. Perhaps that is the intent. But that outcome is bad for US policy overall, does nothing to help combat ISIS, and would further strengthen the current tension the US has with Russia. The long game is to open a diplomatic path to work out all of the issues at once. This deal does that and since 1979 opens a path to work out the instability Eisenhower’s miscalculation created 62 years ago.